Del. Courthouse Gunman was Ex-Father-in-Law

Barbara Dixon, who lived next to David Matusiewicz and Belford in Middletown before their divorce, recalled both the parents and grandparents as good neighbors.

“They might have been a little strange,” she said. But the parents and grandparents doted on the children and invited her to bring her grandchildren over to use their pool.

Dixon said Thomas Matusiewicz was outgoing and “very nice” and that she often saw him working on the house or yard.

Dixon said she last spoke with Belford about a month ago. She said Belford was not worried about her safety despite her husband’s release from prison last fall, perhaps because she had stayed in touch with detectives.

“She said, ‘Oh, I think everything will be all right,'” Dixon recalled.

In a Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing in Texas last year, Thomas Matusiewicz noted that he, his wife, son and daughter, Amy Gonzalez, were named as defendants in Delaware Superior Court lawsuit filed by Belford. Matusiewicz also noted in a list of property transfers that he had sold several guns at yard sales in 2010. He listed a single-shot rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, a Glock 9mm pistol and Glock .45-caliber pistol, with a total value received of $650.

Shavack, the police spokesman, said Matusiewicz used a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol in Monday’s shooting, but that he did not know the make and model or whether it could have been the same gun listed in Matusiewicz’s bankruptcy filing.

Bill Heriot, a plaintiff in a business dispute that was scheduled for trial Monday, said he was waiting to enter the courthouse when he saw the gunman pull out a pistol and fire a single shot at each of the two women. After the shooting stopped, Heriot said he knelt down beside the first woman who was shot.

“I turned her over and unbuttoned her coat. I saw a single bullet hole in the center of her chest,” Heriot said. “I held her hand, told her it was going to be all right. Her pupils dilated. She turned pale and passed away.”